Here are the directions that i would like lame to take (As an average end user):

1. Improvement in quality with every release, even if releases are rare/infrequent2. Simple set of command line presets, similar to MPC and Vorbis quality settings (q0-q9 etc) and alias like Internet/Streaming, Portable, CD, Standard, Extreme and Braindead.3. Releases are to be fully tested by Golden Ears before being publicly released, then released as Betas/Alphas for extra quality tests and bug reports.

That's what we all seem to want - it could be so simple! But they obviously don't give a damn about it.

BTW, "frontend" refers to the LAME command line interface in this case, not graphical frontends.

I don't at all understand this bit about Takehiro leaving. He was never flamed or treated unfriendly - quite the opposite really, Dibrom thanked and credited him for his work wherever he could. I find this type of behaviour plain childish and weak.

Dibrom, did he give you any specific examples of the "rudeness" that disturbed him?

Dibrom, did he give you any specific examples of the "rudeness" that disturbed him?

No. Too be honest though, I'd rather not talk about it anymore. I think that the discussion has really been pretty much exhausted. I said as much as I could, and it seems that it made little difference. I'm ready to move on.

Well.. update on the situation. Now it seems Takehiro is no longer interested in listening test data for LAME, because HA is "rude". FIY, to those unaware, he was the only developer recently who was working on the core LAME psymodel issues.

Things are going from annyoing to worse to very bad.

Remember the happy times just a year ago? Dibrom's brilliant presets being fine-tuned and released with the 3.90? Was this the beginning of the end of LAME?

I guess the best thing is to let Takehiro do some more work and then try whether there is sufficient progress to look into tunning again?

BTW: I've been happy with LAME 3.9x and APS for nearly a year now so I haven't been vocal at all.

I don't at all understand this bit about Takehiro leaving. He was never flamed or treated unfriendly - quite the opposite really, Dibrom thanked and credited him for his work wherever he could. I find this type of behaviour plain childish and weak.

Dibrom, did he give you any specific examples of the "rudeness" that disturbed him?

from lame-dev:

QUOTE

Takehiro wrote:But I lost any interesting in communicating on HA. There're already somany TODO I want to/should do. On HA, there're many ranting for newfeature or compliant for development strategy, but I cannot respond.Reading it is only wasting my time. And even some of them are veryrude and brings me mixed emotion (sad/anger/disappointed...).

I promised to post listening reports to lame-dev in the future and he continues visiting HA's irc-channel.He's also working on 3.94alpha5 based on the little testing I made.

I understand this because his time is limited, he only wants to get the exact precise info, and browsing HA and reading about how badly Lame is organized etc. (he only wants to code anyway) is taking time away from him, and isn't exactly any fun to read. Since Tak is the main coder atm, I wish other devs would try to improve the organizing of the project.

I'm not an expert on open source projects but being someone who has benifitted from all your work I just want to say thank you!. I'll continue to use MP3 for my portible needs until new hardware support comes to market for the other newer codecs. With all the different companies profiting from the MP3 format it baffles me why they wouldn't take a more supportive roll in the development of the codec. Again thanks to all who have worked on the project. B)

I can understand how takehiro feels... everyone is bashing the development process, even me! but the only reason we are doing is that one of the best developers of lame has quit which is proof that the development process is not working. It is a big downward step in the eyes of meny end users and obviously is going to be discussed alot on this forum. I hope takehiro will except our test results to further develop lames quality as it would be a shame and unproductive not to use such a resource that Hydrogen Audio has to offer.

@Volcano: I was referring to the same thing. It doesnt matter what lame looks like as most people use 3rd party frontends anyway. The CLI doesn't need to be changed as all it needs to do is provide functionality which can then be taken care of by 3rd Party GUI's which it already does...

My only problem with LAME is that the massive amounts of presets and switches go thoroughly undocumented. Even when someone asks what switches and presets are there?, no one seems to present a real answer, but go read and find out. In my simple opinion a list should be compiled of switches and presets and if one wants to know what they do then they can go and research it out, but a simple "cheatsheet" type organization of the options available really would be nice... I see no point in adding more and more options when 90% percent of people would never be able to find out what they were anyway.

On HA, there're many ranting for new feature or compliant for development strategy, but I cannot respond. Reading it is only wasting my time.

My symphaties for the developers, but I don't think that anyone has given them critique at a personal level. It's issues fighting, not people.

It may not be nice to read critique about work of you own. But of course, a coder wants to code. And I know this from business life, don't let coders mess with anything else than coding. After all one has spent a lot of effot and hours on it. But the critique shows that something is wrong. I remember when Dibrom was tuning his presets people supported him with test results and encouraging words. --APS and others were finalized and nobody has been nagging about them, people have been 100% satisfied. So why bring all this good down? It is quite predictable that community like this will react strongly if something they are used to is suddenly about to be diminished. And one more thing, this kind of "I will not play with you no more" attitude which is shown here and there is childish and non-respectful.

Sorry if I was rude - I hope I didn't cause any permanent damage.

The only good news is that 3.94a with JohnV:s commanline is almost as good as 3.92 --aps

Sorry to revive, but having just joined and discovered this forum, I must just say that things like this seem to happen when a project isn't a commercial project. When there's no motivation (and in today's society, money is a motivating factor!) there's no direction, or very little. Look, I started encoding using Xing and AudioCat, and eventually found Lame. At the time, I felt nothing could touch Xing (I didn't have a great setup and I understood Mp3's weren't completely perfect copies, plus I was using VBR ~160kbps when everyone was using 128) until I used Lame. Then I got more space, a better system, and more demands. Having read a lot of links, I believe there's not much more we can push out of Mp3 and Lame in turn. Probably speed, but then there's the speed vs quality issue. If you're not happy with Lame 3.90.2/3 output, then it's time to look elsewhere. I've seen the "Lame 4 alpha" speeds and listened to the quality. Look, speed's all you really can push now (IMO), but if you're using Lame in the first place, speed wasn't an issue. Pushing more commercial companies to use Lame as an encoder would be a way to get more development done, but hey?, what more can we ask for from a streaming format that has some limitations. Looks like a typical Betamax vs VHS. I don't think the developers are going to spend much time on a project that's pretty much done it's job. It got us to Lame 3.90x, and that's pretty cool for my purposes. (I don't mind my PC working in the wee hours of morn encoding B) ) My thanks to the guys who got us this far and saved us from Xing!!

I would like to see Dibrom take the LAME code and split it off. Do his own thing. Change the name. Make it better. If he had the time and the motivation.

3.90.3 is already pretty darn good. Gapless support is probably the only thing I wish were there, and I don't know if that would ever be possible anyway. APS is already transparent for me, and the only improvement would be to get the bitrate down.

I wish LAME were still improving, but I think we've reached the point where it's already good enough for portables, and for anything else we should probably be going to a different format anyway.

I can see things here that aren't meant as disrespectful, but to someone who has put hours of free time into their hobby only to recieve criticsm like this (granted, amongst a lot of heart-felt praise) it is going to come across as arrogant and downright insulting.

My opinion shouldn't be taken as worth much because I know so little about the matter. I however feel it is unfair to say the LAME devs aren't working hard enough, or 'could do better'. If their commitment doesn't satifsfy you, get involved yourself (for the first time, or again in Dibrom's case) These people are coding for your pleasure, not for their own.

QUOTE

Dibrom wrote:If the developers do not want the responsibility that a project like LAME requires, then they should do something to remedy the situation.

I understand your point here, but maybe this is why we are seeing devs quit, or have become dispassionate with the idea of a unified testing method - they want to enjoy a bit of coding in their personal time, not have the weight of a million users on their shoulders.

Raising an opinion I have voiced before, I would love to see the devs move off to new projects. This has given me another reason why. FAAC is a fledgling encoder in need of the kind of work they can give. It doesn't come with the expectation of the world - and with it, the disappointment and dissatisfaction from users who think they're not getting enough.

Vorbis is another promising project crying out for help, 1 man split between 100 different projects, and so nothing ends up getting done in good time. I see helping MP3 as a waste of good talent, the format is 99% squeezed dry by the LAME codec, whereas AAC/OGG are what, 50% of their potential.

I just wish some of the coders felt the same, we could have progress in new technologies that will really forward the world of audio compression.

Vorbis is another promising project crying out for help, 1 man split between 100 different projects, and so nothing ends up getting done in good time. I see helping MP3 as a waste of good talent, the format is 99% squeezed dry by the LAME codec, whereas AAC/OGG are what, 50% of their potential.

I see vorbis as a project thats forever going to be wedged between more compatable and widely supported formats. No offense to people who like vorbis but its worthless to me if it never gets any portable support. For that reason squeezing more from MP3 makes sense- it will be put to good use by lots of people.

For that reason squeezing more from MP3 makes sense- it will be put to good use by lots of people.

Anyway with LAME4 apparently in the works this whole thread is dated.

Not actually... what's left to squeeze out of Lame? Is a 1% increase in encoding efficiency worth all that effort and time, when promising new codec's that could use that development time could improve their functionality dramatically for the benefit of the masses in the future.

Oh, and this is the future of Lame in general and I don't think Lame 4 is going change the question. Its supporting a format that's getting a lot of flac from other format developers thanks to the commercial and technical limitations of Mp3 and this places Lame in the hotseat. Do we continue to develop something already optimised or use the time to get something better?